


Contrappunto

by larissabernstein



Series: The Marvellous and Utterly Scandalous Adventures of Corneillegué and Corsair [2]
Category: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera & Related Fandoms, Phantom of the Opera - Lloyd Webber
Genre: Aestheticism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Blood, F/M, Facial Shaving, Fan Characters, Fan Insert, Faux Music History, Happy Ending, Historical Figures, Historical References, Humor, Knifeplay, Literary References & Allusions, Meta, Metafiction, Parody, Post-Canon, Romance, Smut, Spanking, poetic despair, real person fiction - Freeform, the brush finally makes its great entrance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-07
Updated: 2020-01-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:08:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22160824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/larissabernstein/pseuds/larissabernstein
Summary: Paris, 1891. The adventure continues.Sequel to "Capriccio" - it really makes sense to read that one first.
Relationships: Erik | Phantom of the Opera/Cat Corsair, Erik | Phantom of the Opera/Original Character(s), Erik | Phantom of the Opera/Original Female Character(s)
Series: The Marvellous and Utterly Scandalous Adventures of Corneillegué and Corsair [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1543690
Comments: 8
Kudos: 18





	Contrappunto

**Author's Note:**

  * For [catcorsair](https://archiveofourown.org/users/catcorsair/gifts).



> As always with my phics, this is set in the ALW universe (albeit taking place several years after the events of the Final Lair), and when I say ALW, I mean the original West End production. And as always: my Merik is based on the original one. Very few details were borrowed from Leroux and Kay.

**Contrappunto**

His home felt terribly empty without her, empty and silent, because whatever music he was trying to put into notes refused to obey, and deep down in his heart Erik knew exactly that he was not going to survive the loss — not _this_ loss, not now, after everything he had experienced with her, the happiness, the vibrant inspiration, the vexing hours of working together, the lust, oh god, the magnitude of lust, the endless fights, those too — Cat had opened him wide for the possibilities and promises of pleasure, pleasure of the mind, pleasure of the flesh, each fulfilment only increasing his hunger and speaking of more, more, more to come, and then she had left him like this, his entire self torn open to resemble a gaping hole, a void.

 _You are dramatic again, Erik_ , he heard her say in his mind, but the very fact that it was only in his mind justified and aggravated his suffering. It was not even her home, it had never really been, he tried to remind himself, but for nought, as every corner was still suffused with her presence, a presence his home had soaked up since the moment she had first set foot in his lair and then — with an alarming speed and ever increasing frequency — had come back to visit him almost every other day, scattering her belongings all over his house and invading his privacy, and rearranging both his furniture and his schedule, very much an intruder, yet never a prisoner; he had fallen surprisingly quickly into their new routine: each of them would work separately on their part of the opera for a few hours per visit, the mere presence of the other seemingly inspiration enough, before they would show each other the fruits of the day and fall into heated exchanges and — often enough — wild arguments that would almost always end with vicious fucking, against the wall, or on the soft carpet in front of the fire, and quite regularly over the piano bench. They had never discussed the conditions and framework of their arrangement, Erik realised, never defined any clear boundaries or obligations. Over time, she had come to spend more nights at his home than not, but even so, there had been enough occasions when she would tend to her social life, her friends and lovers and salons, and leave him alone, and that meant: leave him to work himself into a frenzy of possessive ire — ire he had no right to feel — but she had come back to him each time, and it had given him a good excuse to claim her all over again, forcefully and unequivocally, to make her see to whom she really belonged, no matter if he had any right to hope.

And how could he blame her for her needs that made good use of the willing _bohème_ , when her insatiable appetite was simply too great for one man to satisfy, even for him who had every reason to be assured of his superior mastery over her instrument? No, he could not blame her — but he could still punish her for it, take out on her his anger over what his stupid heart stubbornly called unfaithfulness, and show her how much pleasure he was able to mete out, how much torturous pleasure, when he would make her find her crisis again and again — around the ample girth of his eager cock he would stuff into her — under his skilled fingers that would not cease their attack on this useful tender pearl of hers even when she already shook violently and cried out for mercy, because it was too much, _God help me, no, Erik, enough_ — under his tongue that would lap up her tangy honey, not even bothering with the pretence of cleaning her up, no, just adding to the madness that already had her spasming, and he would hold her trembling knees apart with great strength, no matter how much she tried to close them or scoot away from under his onslaught, no, he would keep licking and sucking on this wondrous little bud and delve deeply into her folds, until she would start batting at him with both hands, and then, only then, would he fuck her one more time with three of his fingers while keeping his other hand securely wrapped around her throat, in a punishing pace, each thrust pivoting on a twist and turn that would massage her most sensitive spot inside just so, till he could feel her cramp up and then she would explode in these fascinating squirts of wetness, as if her cunt cried out and spat tears at him, and then, only then and finally then, would he withdraw his hand, soaked in her juices up to the cuffs of his shirt, and finish her off with a few well-aimed slaps at her dripping cunt lips, making sure to graze the swollen bud above them, as if plucking a violin’s string in a final ornamental flourish.

He would apologise moments later, he always did.

 _Three years!_ Had it really been that long already? These had been the best three years of his life, and yet the worst three years for the same reason, because they had irretrievably chipped away at his armour, and there was no going back now to his earlier state of existence.

Erik let himself plummet onto the recamier, sending a messy pile of sheet music fluttering to the floor, and stared up into the darkness of his parlour’s high vaults, feeling all the weight of the massive building above on his shoulders. It was a sad view — too strong was the memory of the last time he had stared up into the blackness, and he had not been seeing much at the time, except for bursts of colour and light dancing in his mind, while the cursed woman, whose absence was now so painful, had sucked him off most formidably.

It had been one of those days that had started with a lazy morning after a wild night of sin and depravity, but then, the same could be said of most of their days together. She had been lounging on the bed way past noon, pen and paper in hand, editing her draft; editing and re-editing was something she did with an almost compulsory eagerness, this he had learned quite soon. It was disconcerting, how she could do her work in bed like this, and in a state of near-undress no less, with only a sheer silk robe or one of those modern kimonos she favoured so much covering her flesh, a constant temptation, a thorn in his side. While he was used to taking great care of his attire even in the private solitude of his home — well, no, he had to admit, his current rumpled state might say something else, but then, if anything it posed an exception to the general rule and followed the specific aesthetic demands of poetic despair — , her frequent visits led him to put in an extra effort and make sure he was impeccably dressed, mask and wig in place, and make-up flawless. He was constantly baring his soul and pain and passion in his music and in sharing his creative process with her; there was no need for lowly, obscene, _bodily_ nakedness, in order to be really seen by her.

She, however, seemed to become more and more at ease around him, often not even tying her robes properly, rather letting them gape just so, and it gave him pause to wonder if she had a certain preference to be exposed and on display like this. He also noticed that she had close to no qualms about touching herself quite freely; he knew what she was doing, the insatiable little thing, how her hands worked themselves into a frenzy under the folds of her dressing gown, and he knew how she squeezed and clenched her delicious thighs together even when her hands were visible and seemingly occupied; he knew how she built the pressure and teased herself in the revealing rhythm of her hunger: he could see the slightest of contractions, the play of muscles under her thin gown, but above all he could smell it on her, and in the air of his home, the scent that said arousal and wanton desire and raw need. He had walked in on her more than once, staring, always staring, at her hand between her thighs, a hand he wanted to bat away to replace it with his own, and a hand he felt the acute ache to lick clean to chase each and every drop of her taste. She never complained when he did.

It was not only lewd actions like these that had transformed his home, wiped away the last cobwebs of a memory named Christine, chased the ghosts out of the Louis Philippe guest room, and replaced the shadows of the past with the flesh of impossibly new and daring experiences. But with Cat gone, he hardly recognised his home anymore that seemed to mock him with little details he had never noticed before, and echos of music that was intrinsically connected to her, music that only justified its existence in relation to her written words.

A soft meow was the only warning he received before Ayesha made a rough landing half on top of his chest, half on his neck, knocking the breath out of him, and head-butting his chin and demanding attention. Erik felt a humourless laugh escape his throat as he obliged and raised one hand to gently scratch behind the animal’s ear. “You miss her too, don’t you?” They had come to achieve a special rapport, after all, the feline creature and her human counterpart, and rather quickly so, much to Erik’s joy. Christine had only ever been tolerated by the beast, tolerated at best, and maybe that had been a bad sign from the start. With Cat the animal had no such reservations, on the contrary; it had happened countless times that Erik was asked to fetch this or that for the woman — _more tea, Erik; Erik, can you get my notebook? Erik, go get my coffee_ —because she could not get up from the recamier or the reading chair or the bed, lest she had to unseat Ayesha from her position curled up on her chest or lap.

But what good was thinking back at these moments? Ayesha was going to be the only cat left for him, and it was just natural that only an animal, a being devoid of higher intelligence, would purposefully invite his caresses.

Perhaps he had not been good to her. No, what an idiotic thought — for sure he had not been good to her and for her, and no apology could ever make things right! How terribly had he treated this woman, with his awful moods and the rage and fury, and violence, always violence, surely it was horrible violence, no matter how she had insisted on the contrary. And even if she were right and, for whatever strange reason, had actually liked how he had unleashed the beast and taken her whenever he pleased, wherever he pleased, and choked her into unconsciousness yet again, and forced his sinful appendage down her throat, and spanked her arse and her thighs and her cunt — great heavens, what kind of monster would hit a lady’s unspeakable parts! and just why did he feel so compelled to do this again and again? — and curse his deviant self, he got hard now even just thinking about his sins against this poor woman — and really, he had enjoyed it, he had enjoyed it far too much, how she had screamed in rapture and lust and convulsed around his cock, and fingers, and tongue, and this had only been a delusion of course, wishful thinking of his demented brain, because what woman in her right mind would enjoy this, by _him_ no less, and he had let her enable him and challenge him into perverted acts — damn, he pushed the palm of one hand strongly against his wool-covered groin, willing the arousal to stop, grinding into his palm, just to make this pain go away, but the pain in his soul was never going to go away, and why did Ayesha need to stare at his pathetic self like that, judging him silently with those feline eyes? — but even if the woman were right and had actually enjoyed the… things… they had done, those crimes he had committed, there was still the damning sin of his face, this violence he had inflicted on her by his mere existence, by the chokehold of his utter ugliness. This was surely what had driven her away.

She had just waited for an opportunity to arise, and this foppish Briton, _what-was-his-name-again_ , ah, yes, Wilde, plagiarising their glorious collaboration, trespassing on the triumph of _Le Portrait de Faust_ , their first opera as a creative duo — and their last, he came to realise now, because, certainly, she was never going to return to him, and so it was also going to be Erik’s last opera, naturally, because what good was left now in continuing this sorry excuse of a life? — no, Erik would not survive this, he would make sure of that — this foppish Briton had presented the perfect chance for her to flee Paris, to flee from the underground lair, to flee from the monstrosity that was Erik. He had known it the very moment Cat had suggested to take care of this nasty complication, and of course she had meant this stupid lawsuit, but the only nasty complication had been Erik all along, what else. She was so much better off without him, was she not? And while opera was not exactly avant-garde in England, they did have a fair share of radical authors and playwrights and starving artists, and she would not stay lonely for long, no, she had probably spread her legs for a member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood the moment she had walked off the ship — were those fuckers still around? — and it was only a matter of time till the world would see her immortalised on canvas as a new Ophelia or Circe — or Pandora maybe? He had known it, and still, he had agreed, no, had actively encouraged her to go to London, all under the threadbare pretence of finding a solution to the lawsuit, to settle it, if possible, out of court to spare them the time and money and the nuisance of lawyers he might wish to kill later, no matter how the proceedings were to go, and of the two of them, she had been indeed the party that was most wronged by the toff’s all too similar novel, and it was only right and just for her to seek compensation, was it not? And if it came with the added benefit of getting rid of Erik, was this not even greater justice?

He could have made an honest woman out of her. He could have given her his damn ring and courted her, like normal civilised people would go about it, instead of fucking her on every available surface of his underground home, and he could have kissed her hand in chivalrous greeting instead of burying his ruined face under her skirts whenever she had dared to walk into the den of the monster, and if he had indeed allowed himself bolder liberties, he could have even tried to kiss her on the lips, the mouth-lips, the not-cunt-lips, these unexplored parts of her, and whisper sweet nothings into her ear, but always, always, with the morally right intention of making her his lawful wife.

He rubbed a thumb over the circular onyx surface of his signet ring. No, this had not worked out the first time around, and never, never, had there been even the slightest bit of hope of getting another chance at a normal life, a chance at love. And kisses, mundane kisses, were just not in his repertoire; masked kisses seemed too cumbersome, unmasked ones too gruesome to even consider, but both were poisoned by the past in any case. Monsters did not deserve love — or a life, this thought became clearer and clearer by the second.

So it was finally over now, the music of the night just as much as the music of the dusk and dawn, those deceitful cousins of the glaring day, unequivocally and more painfully than ever, and he wished her well, he really did. The coffin, long neglected in favour of her bed, or dare he even think _their bed_ , was still waiting for him, and this time it was going to be a truly restful sleep. He was going to take care of his last things, find a good place for Ayesha, make sure the Girys received their rightful share in his will, the major part of which would of course be dedicated to Cat… Cat who had a future and a life and no shortage of friends and lovers.

“And she deserves it,” he mumbled into the soft fur of the purring creature draped over his chest and intruding on the lower half of his face, “curse her for ever coming into my life, but she deserves it after tolerating me for three insane years.” At this, Ayesha’s ears perked up and the cat went into full alertness and jumped down onto the carpet to make a mad dash across the parlour, and it was no wonder — even a pet would rather flee his ugly presence, disgusted by his sobs, and the self-pity, and… No, there was a noise out there on the lake, water lapping gently at the sides of a boat, not any boat, the second gondola, the one she always… Could it be?

Erik sat up and it was just in time, before the portcullis was drawn up and then she, _she_ , walked right into his den again, maybe he had given her intelligence a little too much credit after all, and there was a spring in her step and a smile on her beautiful face, and then it disappeared, the smile all but fell away and she frowned at the sight of him. Was that any surprise?

“Are you sick?” Her voice was tinged with concern, and not a moment later she was already sitting down next to him on the recamier and a dainty hand touched his bare left cheek, and her frown only grew when he flinched at the contact. “Or are you drunk?” And her head turned away from him and he saw how she let her gaze wander around the lair, concern and disapproval warring on her features, and take in the terrible disorder of his home, clothes strewn about, as if they had sprouted from the carpets, and sheet music littering the floor, and the many used wine glasses that had increasingly appeared over the last three weeks and now occupied various surfaces of the room. If he had at least dumped the dirty evidence into the lake!

“Whatever happened here, Erik?”

“Erik happened.” He felt himself shrug and it was not the reply she had expected, he saw it immediately, but why was she here, really? To torment him, to taunt him one last time — because they always came back one last time, these infuriating women, did they not, one last time to give back a ring or just dig in the knife a little deeper — or to tell him in excruciating details whom she had fucked in England and how handsome the artists were over there, bland, surely, but handsome?

Her eyes were locked on his face, he could feel the stare prickling on his skin, and he was not exactly sure what to make of it.

“I was gone for just three weeks and you… you turn into,” she made a poignant gesture with one hand, “ _this_ , this dramatic mess.” Her eyes narrowed. “Did you even work at all on _Le Pirate_? I have a great idea for the end of act two, and I can’t wait to show you!”

This was surely a misunderstanding, or an auditory hallucination, because there was no logical explanation why she should inquire after his creative progress — that is, unless… Unless she had indeed come back to him, into his life and into his work, and he felt sober and awake and alarmed all at once, and, yes, here she was, did he need any other reassurance, here she was sitting, a pitying and mildly annoyed look on her face, but sitting right next to him, her hand combing through his greasy wig, and what terrible impression had he made on her, what disgusting weakness had he let her see, and if not for any other failures, this was now going to drive her away, and…

“When have you last shaved?” She pulled him out of his dark musings, and he became aware that her hand was now mapping out his good cheek and wandering over his chin, and, she would not dare venture any further to the right and approach the mask, would she…? But this felt also surprisingly nice, and the soft scratching sound that came from his copious stubble under her exploring fingers was soothing and exciting at the same time, and he could not help leaning into her touch. Maybe he should explain himself to her, or just apologise for the mess and the lack of trust, yes, maybe he should just throw himself at her feet and kiss the seam of her dress and beg forgiveness for ever doubting her, but none of these options seemed especially attractive to him now, not with her hand still on his face, and the soft caresses wrapping his heart into a warm blanket of… an emotion, a strong, good emotion. And there was also the added urgency of his arousal spiking anew, with her close proximity, and put together in a dizzying combination — this strong, good emotion and the beginning, but insistent tendrils of lust — this chord was overwhelming and frightening, and he felt torn between fleeing or fighting, or — or just advancing on her, yes, like this, and throwing her into a supine position, simultaneously grabbing the many yards of her skirts and diving headlong under the fabric, to the tune of her delighted shrieks, and — ah, she did not wear anything under them, she had not only actually come back to him but even without underwear, just the way she knew he liked her best — and then he was already pressing kisses into the softness of her thighs, those outrageous, always tempting thighs he would yell at her about, if his mouth were not otherwise occupied, because how dare she have such thighs, no one should have such thighs, and how dare she flaunt them to him all the time as the constant distraction and temptation they posed even in her absence, in the depths of his mind, and then he was already moving towards her centre, and oh, how he would worship her now and show her just how delighted he was over her return, and most of all, he would convince himself that this was indeed real, it was the only way!

Cat, however, was fidgeting and writhing, and then she all but pulled him away and out from under her skirts. Had he misread the situation? And did it matter?

No, her smile was all the reassurance he needed. “Either you let this would-be beard of yours grow until it is all soft and fluffy, or you let me shave you. This amateurish stubble will not do — it tickles and scratches!”

Erik was not sure what commanded his attention more strongly — the image of himself with half a beard, because surely, she could not expect him to let the few patches on his deformed side that were able to sprout a decent beard, do exactly that, it would look grotesque even in his mind and itch under the mask, and also what did she mean with “until it is all soft and fluffy”, how long did it take for a beard to achieve this desired state and how long would he have to wait until he could bury his face in her folds again, there were way too many variables — or the idea of letting her shave him.

“Allow me?” She looked expectantly at him, and how could he deny her? “And take off the mask already, Erik, there are even wine stains on it, for god’s sake, and after this strange kind of welcome today you owe me anyway!”

If he made the effort to go through all the instances recorded in his mind when he had been unmasked in front of her, without her being blindfolded, without the cover of a pitch-black room, no, just full facial nudity, he would be able to count them on one hand, he was sure of this. And one of those instances had actually been the ill-fated premiere of _Don Juan_. When he had been bared not only to and by the woman he once had loved, but also unwittingly to the woman who was now so strangely intent on sharing her work and bed and life with him, _and also bared to an audience of two-thousand pairs of eyes_ , his mind supplied, because it was helpful like that. He shook off the memory.

The other — maybe three, maybe four times — had been accidents.

The waistcoat she had all but ripped away and up over his head, knocking the mask off in the process. Which had resulted in a minute of tense, awkward silence, before he had grasped his mask and she had grasped his engorged length, effectively stopping whatever dangerous possibilities had threatened to unfold.

The intense oral session that had started out with her being, as so often, safely blindfolded and his face unmasked to allow his lips a wider range of motion and spare her the discomfort of the porcelain edges digging into her skin, but ended with the silk scarf slipping loose from around her head and giving her the full view of his deformed face covered in her juices. Which had resulted in her licking them off his face, hideous side and all, and his finding a sudden and almost violent climax with his cock entirely untouched.

The night when he had surprised both of them by finishing three times, in her mouth, in her cunt, and — oh, yes, all over her breasts, this was a fine memory up to this point, and he had been so worn out that he had fallen asleep almost instantly without checking the mask for a secure fit, and in the morning it was buried under the purring form of Ayesha between both of their pillows. Which probably did not count as Cat had been too busy cuddling the purring beast to fully appreciate the view of the gruesome monster on the other side of the bed.

Had there been a forth time? Something involving a crisis that had her body tremble and her legs shake violently and one of her pretty feet kick him right in the face, dislocating the mask, and almost his jaw too? Which was not a memory he cared to dwell on too deeply, mask or not.

He had survived all of these accidents, and so had she, with minor to no rage and tears and outbursts on his part, and a lack of disgust and fear on her part that still kept amazing him to the present day. Was it really such a big step to take the unmasking from accidental and awkward to deliberate and welcome, in a gesture of trust?

This was how Erik found himself half an hour and a relaxing and most necessary bath later seated in the comfortable reclining chair in front of her dressing table in the Louis Philippe room, the blade of a straight razor at his throat. He had donned his elaborately embroidered banyan over a perfectly starched shirt and pressed trousers, and naturally a matching waistcoat, and put on a fresh and impeccably combed wig — he had decided against his beloved mandarin hat, however, as he had just felt silly to put it on for a shave, no matter how much he used to wear the matching set at other times, when the circumstances called for relaxed house garments —, to preserve at least part of his dignity and steel himself for whatever rejection was going to come his way. His face, however, was bared to the cruel glare of the bright electrical light — a modern installation he had been rather proud of and that came now back to bite him; he was so used to shaving in a room hardly lit by the light of a single candle, using a tiny mirror just barely sufficient to give him an idea what he was doing, without having to see his face in clear, excruciating detail — and the same setting worked just fine for putting on his self-made Venetian ceruse to whiten the complexion of the parts of his face not covered by the mask, and the subtle lines of _kohl_ for his eyes that he had favoured since his days in Persia — that the mere idea of having to sit through this shave watching himself in the mirror and watching Cat watch him, filled him with disgust.

So, once he had sufficiently drunk in the sight of Cat who had changed into yet another one of her utterly daring dressing gowns, all sheer lace and a mere hint of silk this time — and what an arousing contrast her soft curves and oh-so-feminine attire made to the murderous weapon she confidently held in her hand — he chose to keep his eyes shut. He could hear her move around, the soft rustle of silk, the sharpening of the blade against the leather strop, the bristles of the shaving brush swirling and picking up the thick creamy lather of the soap from the bowl before he felt it cool and soothing on his skin.

“I will only use the shaving brush on your left side, otherwise I won’t see where that razor is going under all that foam, and I do not want to injure you,” he heard her say and both her concern and the fact that his ruined side would be most prominent on display while his good side would be covered in the creamy white lather, as if the universe wanted to mock him with this parody of a reverse mask on the lower half of his face, made his heart ache in strange but not altogether unpleasant, just very confused ways.

“Just get on with it, already,” he almost snapped at her, adding a quick “please.” The whole situation made him feel ridiculous and nervous, and both were emotions that could prove rather unhealthy for the other party involved.

“Oh, shush now,” Cat’s voice, close to his ear, “no talking while I take a blade to your skin.” There were many things he wanted to comment on in reply, from the disrespectful boldness of her shushing him and bossing him around, to the absurdity of her level of concern, as if he had not experienced worse threats in his life than a razor, and his face was already beyond repair, what harm would another scar do, but he kept quiet to appease her.

“We are to receive compensation, by the way, should you wonder how negotiations went in London.” Truth to be told, he had been wondering more about her erotic exploits abroad than the question of the possible lawsuit, but he gave a noncommittal grunt. The first scrape of the blade against his cheek did come sudden, then, and he was silently glad that he did not flinch.

“We came to a compromise out of court. Oscar is going to mention our work as the major inspiration of his novel in the preface of all future editions, and he’ll pay an appropriate sum.”

 _Oscar_ it was? She had fucked him, obviously.

Her movements were skilled and functional; she knew how to guide the blade over his face, where to pull his skin taut and how to handle his face this way and that way, in an entirely efficient manner, and it was obvious that she had done this before, which made him ache just a little when he thought about the intimacy of their situation. And when he thought about the foppish Briton who might not have been shaved by her, but surely got a taste of her flesh and her mind, and Erik tried to keep his facial muscles as relaxed as possible, but it was a challenge.

“Relax, Erik, you are way too tense. His interest is not really with the ladies, just so you know it. Please don’t lasso Oscar Wilde.”

With his eyes closed and his voice silenced for the time being, other aspects came into focus — the neutral scent of the shaving soap, mild enough to not drown out the sweet perfume of her skin; the gentle touch of her fingers on his face; the harmony of her calm breathing in tune with the scrape of the blade against his stubble, interrupted by the splashy sound of the quick cleaning of the blade in the bowl of water after every scrape; her warmth and the reality of her presence so close to him.

“Oh, and this might be something worthwhile: He has started to work on a play, _Salomé_ , in French no less, and — while this might still be a few years in the making, he asked me whether I would consider adapting it for a libretto in the future; he would love to see the material reworked into a Corneillegué/Corsair piece, he said. He was quite enthusiastic about your music, Erik.”

So, he had probably not fucked her, good. He gave another grunt, dismissing the topic of an opera that involved the toff in any way, and it seemed to be enough. Cat continued to work on him, and a warm sense of security and being cared for began to lull him to sleep, only stopped short, when she started to work on his bad side. He froze in a pattern all too familiar to him, but nothing terrifying happened; she dabbed the lather only in little spots on his skin, with one fingertip, on those few patches of his right cheek and the strip above his upper lip where hair was able to sprout, stubbornly defying his deformity; he could sense her hold her breath when she followed with the razor, carefully cleaning away stubble and soap.

“Just imagine,” he heard her smile around her words, “what a tantalising material this story would make combined with your music. Picture Salomé, demanding the head of John the Baptist! For the crime of denying her the kiss she has been craving for so long.”

Her fingers on his face were a much stronger force than the blade could ever be, overwhelming in their gentle but confident touch, seemingly unafraid of the monster, and he could not suppress a groan at the pleasure it gave him, a different kind of pleasure, but still one that resonated in his whole body and warmed him into the tips of his fingers and down to his toes, and it also went straight to his groin, because whenever did it not, he had gotten used to his own heightened responsiveness in this regard.

“She would get her revenge, of course,” Cat continued, her enthusiasm entirely unveiled, and guided his head back a little to expose the column of his neck, “and her pleasure. With his head presented to her on a silver platter,” she let the razor scrape over the soft skin, “she would find herself in the throes of madness and lust, and his disembodied head, this head of death, it would receive a final kiss, and… — oh!”

He could not say what happened first, his sudden flinch, or the blade slipping and nicking his skin just above and to the left of his Adam’s apple, or the sharp hiss that coloured his abrupt exhalation. And then there was already a soft towel pressed against his neck, and he sat up fully and came face to face with the mirror image of his monstrosity, but there was no way around it — he had to see for himself, even if the cut was surely harmless, but he had to see, if only to reassure her, and he took hold of the towel, moving it down to keep his shirt and banyan protected but to reveal the cut — it was shallow, but not even that small, no wonder it had a burn to it, and such wounds did tend to bleed quite a bit.

He watched in fascination as bright red blood welled up along the thin line of the cut and formed a series of glistening beads that became heavier until they distorted their shape and spilled over to run down in small rivulets of blood drops, to be caught by the towel. It was a queer sight, this pulsing, living, moving essence, testament to his stubbornly beating heart, his continued existence. As much as he hated mirrors, the sight was riveting — the living corpse was bleeding, red blood like the rest of mankind, yes, he was terribly alive, and was this not miraculous?

“I guess, I’ll live,” Erik said, and it was only half a joke.

Cat, who had been rooted to the spot in equally silent fascination, came back to her senses now, and she leaned in, closer to him, “We should… Maybe I should…,” and then Erik felt her lips close around the thin red line, sucking lightly, and her tongue busied itself with the wound, thoroughly cleaning and wetting the skin, and surely there was some concept from folk medicine behind her actions, but Erik did not care, as the feel of her mouth on his neck, combined with the reflected image of her clinging to him as if she were actually drinking from him like a sort of vampiric creature, was such a curious sight and sensation, and made him terribly, achingly hard, that he could only moan and pull her closer yet by the waist, and she had to be aware what it did to him. He fumbled with the buttons of his trousers, quickly, quickly, and grabbed one of her hands, moulded palm and fingers around his length, at least as far around as they could go, and covered them with his own larger fist on top of her silken skin, and soon he was fucking frantically into their combined grasp, a hectic chase of pleasure, while she continued to soothe his neck and stir his blood with her relentless sucking, and he felt light-headed and dizzy, surely not from the ridiculously negligible blood loss above his shirt collar, but undeniably from this other bodily testament to his red-blooded existence, this absurdly giant genital of his, pulsing in time with his elevated heart beat and pulling a vital quantity of the valuable blood in his body down into the cursed limb of Priapus, to present itself richly engorged, the skin stretched taut and shiny and boasting prominent veins, and both threatening and pathetic in its eagerness.

Her dainty hand could never span the fat girth — “like a fine bottle of Penhaligon’s”, she had called it once, “like their largest bottle”, and she had almost purred around the word _largest_ , and the comparison was absurd, of course, but also resulted in his getting flustered ever so often when he came upon one of those bottles in her boudoir, even wondering if she had ever pleasured herself with it — but what her hand lacked in size, it made up for it with just the right amount of pressure and the delightfully smooth glide her soft palm provided; what a twofold pleasure to have her hand on his cock and in his own hand at the same time, so that he was surrounding her with needy, touch-hungry appendages, leaving no room for escape. There was a roaring in his ears as if ocean waves kept crashing against the shore, more violent with every surge, with every slide of their hands over that most sensitive spot right under the bulbous tip, so intense and perfect that it bordered on painful, and when he suddenly felt her free hand, soft as a feather, against his monstrous right cheek, more a whispering caress than a real touch, he could not hold back any longer, and with a shout he threw back his head, tearing his neck away from her busy lips and teeth, and with several great spurts the thick length jerked in their combined fist, spitting sticky fluid over their hands and all the way onto the lace of her dressing gown, certainly ruining it, just like he ruined and soiled everything that came into contact with him, but right now, he could not bring himself to mind, and a rather animalistic pride of marking her, soiling her, ruining her, filled him instead.

Pride was also what he saw in Cat’s eyes, when he had caught his breath again and realised she was cleaning him up with the towel, a curious pride, and he had to look away from her face and the odd display of care and sympathy — too tender, too _loving_ , a deceit by his mind, surely —, but seeing her wipe his hand and his cock with the cloth, now stained from both his cursed blood and sinful seed, was not really a better sight — too real, too palpable, a reification of his shame — and he settled for closing his eyes and just suffering through the affectionate ministrations, but letting her pack away his now limp but still very sensitive appendage back into the confines of his trousers certainly had to figure as a new low on his list of embarrassments. What would be next? Walks in the park on Sundays, respectable tea parties in their own respectable garden? This was what married couples did, was it not? No, not cutting each other with razors, probably, and getting aroused by the sight of blood, no, this seemed rather unconventional, but all this tender care and fond handling reminded him too much of a life that should be completely inaccessible and unavailable to him, despite, no — because — it was exactly what he had craved for far too many decades of his life, before reality had come crashing down on him again.

The sudden touch of her hands on his face, cupping _both_ of his cheeks, jerked him back into the presence, and his eyes flew open to see Cat standing intoxicatingly close and smiling down at him, and that was a good moment to again curse his current seated position in the reclining chair, in front of that damn mirror no less, because it was a position of surrender that had made him feel at the mercy of first her blade and now delivered him to her piercing gaze, and there was no denying that the situation turned him on as much as it repelled him. He observed her closely, and there was no disgust to discern in her expression, nor false pity. These beautiful eyes just kept roaming his face freely, this face he had taken so much care to hide even, no, especially in her presence.

“Staring is impolite,” he heard himself hiss at her, when he could no longer bear her gaze on him, haughty tones of purest silver masking the distinctly uncomfortable sensation of helplessness twisting his insides, “you had enough time to feast your eyes and glut your soul on my accursed ugliness.”

“You have freckles,” she simply stated — and would that woman ever stop surprising him? no, the odds were not in his favour —, one finger following the path of her eyes, over his left cheekbone, over the soft skin right under his left eye. “Very light freckles, almost golden, but I can see them, when you don’t wear this stage-worthy make-up of yours. And you have laughter lines, here,” he felt her finger trace the small wrinkles that started at the outer corners of his eyes, “and most prominently here,” and then the tip of the finger drew a line from his poor excuse of a nose down to the good corner of his lips, following the deep fold that extended even further down to his chin, then across the absurdly escalating curve of his lips, and back up to the other side of his nasal stump. That tickled and Erik felt his facial muscles twitch under her touch, and no matter how improper the whole ordeal seemed, undermining whatever threatening authority this grotesque face of his had posed, he somehow wanted her to never stop.

“I highly doubt those are from frequent bouts of laughing,” he countered, but the cold edge of his voice was gone. “I am also old, and wrinkled, it seems, thank you for pointing this out, Mademoiselle.”

“Well, maybe you are just lucky that your frowning and pouting have made you end up with such elegant lines.”

 _Lucky_. He snorted. “Oh, don’t I just count my blessings each and every morning! What a handsome beau I make! This is what makes you spread your legs for me, my sightly visage, not the hard thick length you can’t procure elsewhere, it seems, no matter how much you sample other goods, not your deviant hunger for the fat cock that makes you come back to the monster again and again.”

The words were out before he could stop himself, but she chose not to walk into the trap — clever, clever, the woman — and held his gaze for a silent moment that seemed to stretch into eternity, but maybe it was just that time had come to lose its meaning as he drowned in her hazel eyes, and whatever self-deprecating armour of defence he had robed himself in, whatever crude insults he still had at the ready, he felt it all crumble to dust under the sincerity of her expression, and yet it was Erik who broke the spell, as he let his eyes leave hers to drift lower, to her lips, shiny and moist and tinted red from the blood she had licked and sucked and tasted earlier, and this was a stupid move, was it not? But all conscious thought was reduced to a mesmerising whisper of sounds in his head by then, and caution had no place among them, especially not after the events of this evening, so he let it happen, let her notice how he let it happen, let her make it happen, and when she tilted her face to the side, inviting and affirming the inevitable, he did not dodge the kiss this time, as he had so many times before, but let her pull him in. A chorus of dissonant voices in his head began to warn and mock him — did he even know how to kiss? Would he disappoint her? How should he angle his face, and what in god’s name was he supposed to do with his hands? Embrace her? Dive under her dressing gown and grope her roughly, they way she liked it, but more importantly: the way his hands were used to? Or just let his arms hang down by his side or let the two useless limbs flap about helplessly in the air?

No matter how much experience he had acquired in the most scandalous and outrageous practices, especially over the last three years, no matter how skilled and creative and audacious he most certainly was when it came to _fucking_ , unrestrained and debauched fucking, this now was uncharted territory. Worse, however, was the memory of Christine shocking him into stupor with her tactical surprise kiss, and the pain threatened to overwhelm him, and there was the urge to freeze or recoil in horror, but instead he felt his body give in to the raw kaleidoscope of sensation, the gentle softness of Cat’s lips pressing against his, a sudden thing and yet of undetermined, almost ghostly manifestation, the point in time between _not-yet-touching_ and _touching-now_ and _skin-on-skin_ impossible to discern and yet so powerful in silencing the voices in his head. His hands seemingly knew what to do after all, as they came up of their own volition to firmly grasp her upper arms, warm flesh under barely-there lace, both holding her in place and supporting her weight, as she was bent down rather precariously over his seated form, and holding on to something, supporting himself against the deadweight of his mind.

And this kiss — yes, a kiss, a real kiss — it was close-mouthed and scandalously chaste and all the sweeter and more dangerous that way, with the smooth wetness coating her pink plump flesh in hints of copper and iron, tasting red red red, and spelling velvet like a rose petal, and then the lips were coming alive against him, moving carefully, exploring, tiny smiles and hardly-there vocalisations, and he felt his own lips, the part of his face that he had always hated the most because it was so difficult to hide beneath a half-mask and seemed like a weird promise of horrors to come, should one follow the trail over the grossly disproportionate side of his lips into the abyss of the monstrosity that was the right half of his face, he felt these bloated and distorted lips of his begin to describe the shape of answering vowels and open under Cat’s plea, until it was no decision at all, but merely a natural development to share breath and gasps between them, moaning into the other, and feeding on groans in return, and really, this was not so much more difficult than passionately kissing her cunt, was it not, only that these mouth-lips had quite a mind of their own and were demanding, not only quivering and swelling and gently pulsing against his, but pushing and pulling and devouring, and finally meeting her tongue as a counterpart and equal to his own was a thrilling shock, this living, moving, writhing piece of her that knew no shame and no hesitation in challenging him to a duel. It invaded him like an autonomous limb and still, this was a piece of her, this was _she_ , who licked along the expanse and seam of his lips as if she wanted to catalogue the various textures of his cursed skin, and it was _she_ , who penetrated his mouth and drank deeply from his life force, sucking his last vestiges of control out of him, while instilling in him an urge and will to dominate at the same time.

“You are a terrible viper,” he heard the words fall from his own lips the moment she let go of his mouth a little, in a low and rumbling voice, and that was probably not the proper declaration to make after receiving the first kiss in three years, no, the first real kiss in his life, in six decades — the first kiss that counted, that is — but who cared about propriety and manners in their affair. He slowly unfolded himself from the reclining chair, rising and pushing-pulling her along, rising until they stood each on their own two feet again, but still in most intimate closeness, faces touching each other in fond hunger, rising until he towered over her and had to bow down his head a little to ensure their lips defied any offending distance.

“A viper that allows herself way too many liberties with my person; you corrupt me and you use me and you unmask me, and cut me, not to forget, you cut me, with that poet’s brain of yours up in the clouds of biblical inspiration, and I bet you did it on purpose, taking on Salomé’s role to infuse your libretto with _verismo_ ,” he murmured against her lips and backed her up against the dressing table. “Are you still craving my head on a platter now that you claimed your kiss? Or are you craving for more — because let me warn you: it may come at a price.”

Her breaths had quickened and he revelled in the soft moist puffs of air against his own sensitive mouth. “Salomé goes insane, in my version” she whispered back at him, “burning lust for the head of death overwhelming her, killing her with flames no one can slake. That is how we are going to write her, but she will enjoy every second of it.” She leaned back a little to seek out his eyes, and he let her. “Your music burns, Erik, and it fans the flames, but the madness is a price worth paying.”

It wrested a moan out of him, to hear these words from a woman in his arms, from this woman! To feel her excitement at being an accomplice in madness and art, and to scent her arousal in the room, tangible evidence of undeniable lust for his person, no matter how undeserving he might be. He buried his face in the crook of her neck, just breathing her in, and if there was shame in being so overwhelmed, it was a price _he_ was willing to pay.

“I shall play music for you, and you will find the words to bring it to life. But let me take care of you first.” He froze at his own words. There, that had come out rather naturally and entirely unplanned, unscripted, _let me take care of you_ , and maybe this was what couples did for each other, normal couples, conventional couples, but it did not derogate the madness they shared, did it? Who said they could not sneak a tender kiss and go for Sunday walks in the park, and still return to his realm to fuck like deviants, and create scandalous operas, and then fuck some more? This was a frightening idea, frightening and thrilling, and he looked at her to find a mirroring expression of astonishment, with the beginning of a smile tugging at the corners of her lips. And he really had to act now, before this was all going to get to his head and tempt him into rash behaviour — _keep the damn ring where it is_ , a voice in the back of his head warned him, _just don’t touch it_ — so he decided to follow instinct, and instinct demanded he pick her up and throw her over his shoulder to carry her over to her, no, _their_ bed, accompanied by her short shriek of surprise, followed by hearty laughter. He knew that spontaneously picking her up like this, easily demonstrating his strength and vigour, never failed to make quite an impression on her, and so did throwing her onto the bed, carefully, of course, but not too carefully.

“It looks as though I’ll be at your mercy,” she grinned up at him, but ah, he did know his playful wench, hardly an innocent maiden.

“Bold of you to assume that I’d grant you mercy,” he intoned in his best Phantom voice, which only resulted in more laughter, but he found he quite liked the sound of it, despite the unbelievable fact that he was the one to cause such merriment in another being. Let her be carefree and jolly, though; he would get a stronger reaction out of her soon enough, of this he was certain. “Undress.”

A command that was easily followed, but he had to admit that the flimsy excuse of her dressing gown was not much to begin with. He took off his banyan and draped the sumptuous fabric over the back of the chair, which left him in his shirt, trousers, and waistcoat, and, considering his naked face, this was as far a state of undress as he was willing to allow on his part. Fortunately, she had never complained about his preferences, no, quite the contrary, she seemed to approve. And there really was something especially tantalising about the contrast of his elegant suits and her flawless bare skin, something that spoke to him not only on an aesthetic level, but filled him with a sense of power.

The bed dipped under his weight when he joined her, but all he could do for an entire minute was stare at her and try to quiet his rapidly beating heart, as this seemed all too incredible again, and he feared the illusion might just unravel should he so much as put forth one hand to touch her. How he had feared a life ago that a woman might just die from his touch, but now all he could think of was how the touch would surely kill him tonight, after the kiss that had destroyed the fortress of his mind earlier, how it would overwhelm him with its sweetness and burn him to ash.

“Turn around,” he finally managed to croak, “on your hands and knees.” This was just a little easier on him, yes, this was going to help him maintain a last shred of dignity, especially with his face so bare and on display. He hummed appreciatively when she presented her luscious backside to him, a sight he was never going to tire of, and maybe, _maybe_ he was indeed a bit too fond of her arse, but he still had to hear her complain about this. He let his hands roam over the perfectly shaped bottom, enjoying the tactile and visual pleasure of having these smooth cheeks at his disposal, his to stroke tenderly and grope more roughly, whatever fancy his hands decided to follow at any given moment, and Cat visibly relaxed and sank deeper into the mattress, giving herself over to his exploration and dipping the small of her back just the right way to give him better access the moment his hand moved lower between her thighs, these delicious thighs, to seek out the wet heat of her cunt. He hummed again, as he dipped two fingers into her folds and she immediately swayed back against his hand — was he that predictable? That was not going to do, lest they were indeed turning into a bourgeois couple, but before he could muse any further on this, something on her bedside cabinet, glinting like a silvery beacon in the candlelight, caught his attention from the corner of his eye.

“So wet and ready for me,” he murmured, and only paused his ministrations to pull out his fingers and lick them in a most ostentatious way, smacking his lips loudly, before he dove down and fastened his mouth to her cunt. The effect was instantaneous, with her hips pushing back into his face, shamelessly seeking even more contact, and her relaxed moans turning more vocal and urgent. He gave a long and forceful lick along her folds, before letting go of her again and resuming the idle stroking of her derrière and slow teasing of her inner thighs, to the sound of his name leaving her in a markedly frustrated groan.

“Someone is impatient, if not to say, rather wanton tonight. But does she deserve what she craves, hm? Someone left me alone for three long weeks, gallivanted with the competition, then came back only to almost cut off my head and make me bleed, possibly for the sake of her art, possibly out of a perverted desire. And while I can relate to both, a little punishment is warranted, you think not?”

She groaned again, but before she could actually voice her protest in a more eloquent way, he let his palm come down strongly onto her bottom, making a bright handprint bloom on her pale skin in delightful contrast, and turning whatever she was going to say into a breathy hiss against her pillow. Another spank followed the first one, and another, one handprint blending into the next, with this noisy percussion and her soft moans and breaths the only sound in the quiet of the chamber, but when he clandestinely picked up the serendipitously placed object from her bedside cabinet and delivered the first blow with it to her arse, a decidedly louder whimper was heard, and she almost scooted away from him — almost, because he quickly grabbed her by one thigh to bring her back into position.

“You have not forgotten our dear friend here, hm?” And another series of tough strokes with the back of the brush head rained down on her, and these were not harmless warm-ups now, but forceful blows, each of which left a dark red oval mark on the cheeks of her arse that was going to bruise most nicely. She was crying out in earnest now, and her thighs were shaking in little tremors that rippled all over her skin, but she was still holding the position, and this was all the permission he needed to continue.

“I had hoped for the _fleur-de-lis_ pattern to show more distinctly on your skin,” another stroke, “but it seems I miscalculated,” and another one, and he really had to cut this game short now, not only out of consideration for her, but also because any longer, and he would be useless to her and ruin another pair of trousers. “However,” and he paused for dramatic impact but did not hit her again, “you will find that the floral design is much more pronounced on the brush handle, so pronounced actually, that you should have no difficulties to feel it.” And at this, he slowly inserted the thick silver handle into her cunt, and he could only marvel at how greedily her folds sucked in the intruder, twitching ever so beautifully around the metal, and he made sure to twist and manipulate it in a way that made the most of the intricate carvings and ridges, these delightful embellishments that had always felt so sinful against the palms and fingers of his own hypersensitive hands — yes, he had actually spent many a lonely hour of his lifetime just touching and stroking this heirloom object from his childhood in rapt fascination, and it was only due to his gentlemanly restraint that he had not tried out much more adventurous and dirty things with it —, and he focused on giving the hidden sensitive spot in her tight channel sufficient attention. She actively rocked back onto the so pervertedly misused brush, and no, Erik was sure, this was very probably not something so-called normal couples did to each other, and he really had no excuse except an overheated imagination combined with the baseline of his madness, but if those unashamed moans and cries were meant to be expressions of protest, she had to try a little harder. He could not help taking pity on her, however, and he had his own needs to attend after all, and so he sneaked his right hand around and under her to expertly seek out the pearl hidden under her curls, and while he kept a steady pace fucking her with the brush handle, which was a sight that almost undid him right then and there, he circled and played the little bud like the secret instrument it was, until he could feel and see her go rigid and shudder violently under him, with goosebumps dancing along the length of her spine to a crescendo of moans that were a most pleasing compliment to his ears.

Very carefully he eased the brush out of her, slick with her juices, and he made a mental note to properly clean the silver later lest it tarnish, but there were more pressing matters now to attend, and while Cat was taking in great lungfuls of air and still shaking from her crisis, he made quick work of the buttons of his trousers and pulled his painfully hard cock out through the slit in his drawers; just freeing it was already close to overstimulation, and he could not wait any longer now, no, it was now or never — or if not never, so at least only in an hour or two, and who wanted to wait that long and mask his embarrassment in the meantime — so he just pulled her to her knees again, and before she could even process what was happening, he already forced the thick and heavy length into her dripping cunt, to her outcry, but she still swallowed him to the hilt, hungry for every inch of him, and he could not be gentle now, no, there was no time for gentleness, with the urge growing to existential need, and he fucked her roughly through the cries and the little struggle she put up now, because this surely was too much too soon for her thoroughly used cunt, so shortly after her crisis, and he knew that the slaps of his pistoning hips were not exactly kind to her abused backside either, but between the grunts and the squirming her body did betray her and made her meet his thrusts again and again, and this was going to be it, yes, this was going to happen now, and he intensified his efforts once more and almost flattened her into the mattress, one hand creeping further up her body all on its own to hold her by the neck, with just the minimum amount of necessary caution employed, and this was what it took for both of them, it seemed; she shook again in violent spasms, forced to find another almost brutal crisis, and squeezed his cock with her inner muscles, and this sent him over the edge, he could no longer help it, it sent him into the abyss and he tumbled and fell, felt himself falling in a long and weightless drop, and blackness came to embrace him at last.

When he came around, it was to something, no, someone repeatedly slapping and prodding and pushing one of his arms, and it took him only a moment of reorientating himself before he rolled off the warm and sweaty body underneath his own.

Cat sat up and glared at him, arms folded over her beautiful breasts.

“We have reached a new level of domesticity, it seems.” She glared some more, and he wondered how she did it, all righteous anger and fury, with the effect not even slightly ruined by her tousled hair and fogged spectacles that were perched quite askew on her nose. “You are now obviously comfortable enough to fall asleep on top of me and smother me between the pillow and your weight. I thought it was a power move, to restrain me with your body, but then you snored, you actually snored into my ear.”

Erik could do nothing else but shrug rather sheepishly, and while he would have preferred to get up and look for his mask to reinstate a degree of dignity, he busied himself with at least tucking away his cock that was still hanging spent and limp out of his trousers, too indecent a sight for any serious discussion. He had been ready to apologise — as he had done so often before — for hitting her, for taking things too far, for using her for his pleasure when she was obviously far too overstimulated already, for fucking her with a — oh god, had he really done _that_ …? He searched her face, but there was nothing that spoke of serious hurt or insult, and the tiniest of smiles threatened to break through the so artfully composed glare.

“What would you have me say? I think we already established that I am old. Old and wrinkled, if I recall correctly. But should I ever stoop so low to write a _Symphonia Domestica_ , you have the explicit permission to put me out of my misery.”

“I shall,” and the smile now bloomed into a grin. Cat fetched her dressing gown from the edge of the bed and stretched out under the sheer make-shift blanket, patting the space next to her impatiently like she normally used to do for Ayesha, until he finally lay down again alongside her.

“Now, about _Le Pirate_! When I went to London, I had the most exciting idea for act two on the ferry. Say, you have been on a ship before, yes? Oh, why am I even asking, of course you have. So, you have met the archetypical cabin boy, yes? Good. Now, oh and by the way, we two are going on a cruise next month…”

There was much more said that night and while some of it went right over his head — because how was he supposed to focus on work when they were lounging on the bed like this, with his purple marks on her arse, and his seed still warm in her cunt —, and other parts were met with his strongest resistance — because even like this, he recognised that she unabashedly tried to use the situation to assert her position in contentious aspects —, one thing, however, he knew for sure: He was utterly and completely doomed, and he was surprisingly fine with it.

**Postface** :

While it is indisputable that the major part, if not all, of Erik Corneillegué’s works is highly autobiographical, he indeed never stooped so low as to write a symphonic poem about the peace and secure tranquility of his respectable domestic life. Other composers, however, had no such misgivings, or maybe they just lacked a proper muse standing at the ready with knife and Punjab lasso. How else can one justify the uttering of Richard Strauss’ outrageous threat “My next tone poem will represent a day in my family life,” followed by the still more outrageous actualisation of this very threat, in the form of his _Symphonia Domestica_ (op. 53), premiered in New York, in 1904. It boggles the mind.

Gustav Mahler, who conducted the Viennese premiere of Strauss’ tone poem (likewise in 1904), at a time when he first took interest in the duo Corneillegué/Corsair and invited them to the Vienna Court Opera, tried in vain to mediate between Strauss and Corneillegué, but the anecdote of an argument that almost ended in fisticuffs seems to be an exaggeration of the tabloids and early biographers that put more emphasis on scandal than fact. Verified, however, is Mahler’s much quoted statement: “Our good Corneillegué is many things, but mainly he just _is_ , that is all I can say about him.”

**Author's Note:**

> As some of my readers might have noticed, I have purged 90% of my online presence, only leaving my AO3 account untouched. I apologise for any inconvenience this might have caused, but real life forced my hand.  
> If you like my stories, please consider printing or downloading them (AO3 has a nifty download option). As a seasoned fan with a heart for fandom history, I don't plan to Punjab lasso my AO3 account, but one never knows what life demands until it does.


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